SurfStatsLive Info

Server Configuration

How does it work?

Visitor Origin Database

Starting at V2.1 SurfStatsLive makes
use of three methods to provide enhanced visitor origin information:

IP Country Database. A local database of which IP
address ranges belongs to which countries is used to determine
the country the visitor originates from.

Reverse DNS (RDNS) Lookups. RDNS lookups can be performed
by clicking the info button on visitor and some other reports.
Due to the time it takes to perform RDNS lookups SurfStatsLive
performs only one RDNS lookup at a time, when requested. One
problem with RDNS lookups is that its effectiveness is dependant
on whether a pointer (PTR) DNS record for the specific IP address
exists on the DNS server the RDNS lookup is requested from or
not.

Visitor Origin Database. The local Visitor Origin
Database contains organization/ISP information for IP address
ranges. This database is available separately from SurfStats
(30 MB compressed file) and registered per machine at an additional
cost. The Visitor Origin Database was created by performing
Whois queries at organizations that issue IP addresses. Whois
queries are probably the most accurate way to determine visitor
origin information. To install the Visitor Origin Database you
would need to do the following after SurfStatsLive itself
is registered and you have purchased a license for the Visitor
Origin Database from SurfStats.

Stop the SurfStatsLive Merging Service and the Virtual
Web Server on which SurfStatsLive runs and shut down the
SurfStatsLiveComPlus package from Component Services.

Install the visitor origin database to where SurfStatsLive
is installed and register the IP address database
from Server Administration - Options. Important to register.

Reset all site profiles in SurfStatsLive. The log files
will now be re-processed and updated with information from
the visitor origin database.

Start the SurfStatsLive Merging Service and the Virtual
Web Server on which SurfStatsLive runs.

Or, alternatively you can follow the following procedure:

Export your site profiles (using a backup script) from
a SurfStatsLive installation, from Server Administration.

Register SurfStatsLive AND the visitor origin database
from Server Administration - Options. Important to register.

Import the site profiles from the export file created
in the first step. The log files will now be re-processed
and updated with information from the visitor origin database.

Note that if you have both SurfStatsLive
(V2.1 or later) and SurfStats Website Analytics (V7.0 or later) installed
on a computer and you want both to make use of the Visitor Origin
Database you have to install the Visitor Origin Database
to the SurfStatsLive and SurfStats Website Analytics installation
folder. However you only have to register it once (either from SurfStatsLive
or SurfStats Website Analytics).